


Making a New Start: a Bridget Jones Fic

by eggsbenni221



Category: Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor, Romance, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5219123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggsbenni221/pseuds/eggsbenni221
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>(((POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERTS! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!)))</strong>: He reached for her, hooking an arm around her waist as she fell against him, and somehow, her lips were suddenly pressed against the side of his neck. “Hello,” he whispered. “Hi,” she said. Their eyes locked, and before either of them could answer the question hovering in the inch of space between them, their mouths met. Film/column universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making a New Start: a Bridget Jones Fic

**Author's Note:**

> inspired in part by an interrupted snog between Mark Darcy and Bridget Jones in the 3rd series of columns (2005) as well as speculation surrounding leaked photographs from the set of the filming of the third Bridget Jones movie, Bridget Jones’s Baby. (((SPOILER ALERT!))) While fans and the press speculate that the woman spotted with Mark is his new (temporary, obvs) girlfriend, nothing official has been revealed about her role in the film. What follows is entirely the product of my runaway imagination!

Making a New Start: a Bridget Jones Fic  
By Eggsbenni221  
Words: 3966  
Rating: M  
Summary: **(((POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERTS! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!)))** : He reached for her, hooking an arm around her waist as she fell against him, and somehow, her lips were suddenly pressed against the side of his neck. “Hello,” he whispered. “Hi,” she said. Their eyes locked, and before either of them could answer the question hovering in the inch of space between them, their mouths met. Film/column universe.

Author’s Note: inspired in part by an interrupted snog between Mark Darcy and Bridget Jones in the 3rd series of columns (2005) as well as speculation surrounding leaked photographs from the set of the filming of the third Bridget Jones movie, Bridget Jones’s Baby. (((SPOILER ALERT!))) While fans and the press speculate that the woman spotted with Mark is his new (temporary, obvs) girlfriend, nothing official has been revealed about her role in the film. What follows is entirely the product of my runaway imagination!

“Lying close to you, feeling your heart beating  
And I’m wondering what you’re dreaming  
Wondering if it’s me you’re seeing. And then I kiss your eyes and thank God we’re together.  
I just wanna stay with you in this moment forever  
Forever and ever.” Aerosmith, “I don’t Want to Miss a Thing”

A burst of early morning sunshine poured through the windows, cheerfully beckoning to Mark as he endeavored to burrow beneath the covers. Pressing his cheek into the pillow, he kept his eyes resolutely closed, trying to hold on to the dream that had already begun to slide from his consciousness like grains of sand between his fingers. As he lay still, he could feel the warm weight of her beside him, his arm draped across her shoulders. Miraculously, her fragrance seemed to cling to the bed clothes, and he could almost imagine her lips brushing his. Perhaps he’d just lie here all day until the memory dissolved. A painful jolt in his ribs nearly forced his eyes open, however.  
“Mark!” Now her voice had rendered the delusion even more convincing; how long, Mark wondered, could he suspend the moment until this comfortable, deliciously warm soap bubble would burst? Another jab in the ribs effectively recalled him to his senses. The eyes gazing down at him were bright blue and dancing with laughter. “It’s about time,” she said. For several moments, Mark simply stared, afraid lest her image would vanish if he looked away. “Hello, Earth to Mark Darcy!” Finally, a slow smile spread its way across his face.  
“Bridget,” he whispered, reassuring himself with the warmth of her skin against his fingers as he reached to stroke her cheek.  
“I thought you’d never wake up.”  
“Well, I was having a rather lovely dream,” he said, “but it would appear that this might be one of the few moments in life when reality far surpasses it.”  
“Well, I need breakfast,” said Bridget, tossing back the duvet and beginning to wiggle out from beneath his arm, at which mark pulled her down beside him and commenced nibbling on her ear. As she let out a giggle of protest, his heart flooded with warmth. How he had missed this woman; the way she fit so comfortably in the crook of his arm, their bodies two halves of a puzzle; the way her hair tickled his face when she rested her head against his shoulder; the way her eyes shone when he spoke her name.  
“I could stay this way forever,” he whispered, drawing his arm more securely around her shoulders.  
“We can’t, Mark.”  
“Why ever not?” he asked, slightly ashamed at the tiny prickle of unease in the pit of his stomach.  
“Because eventually I’m going to need the loo again.”  
“Oh, Bridget.” Mark almost didn’t recognize the bubble of laughter that began deep in his belly, so long had it seemed since he’d felt it. “I thought I’d never laugh like that again,” he said once he’d composed himself, dipping his head to drop a kiss on the end of Bridget’s nose.  
“I’d imagine not,” she said. “Philippa seems the sort of woman who would have kicked you out of bed for giggling.” Mark winced; he knew this moment would come eventually, even if they had so far managed to avoid it. “You never did tell me precisely how that happened, you know,” Bridget continued. If they were truly going to make a new start, they must, Mark knew, do so unencumbered by baggage, and it was only natural that Bridget should express curiosity about Mark’s brief, unmitigated disaster of a relationship with Philippa—a new colleague who had begun working alongside Mark not long after he and Bridget had split. When fertility struggles had placed far more strain on their relationship than either of them could bear, Mark had, in what he had considered at the time a gesture of noble, selfless love, thought it unfair to keep Bridget tethered to a commitment that could never fully give her the life of which she’d always dreamed. After all of the attempts, the frustration, the medical consultations, the long talks, and the tears, one hard, cold fact remained: they wanted children. Mark, it seemed, couldn’t give Bridget children, and in spite of, or perhaps because of his love for her, he could never have lived with himself if Bridget’s remaining with him meant depriving herself of the one thing she wanted that he couldn’t give her.  
Following their separation, Mark had once again retreated into his protective shell, plunging himself into work, hoping—and yet fearing—that he could learn to live without Bridget. He had at first taken little if any notice of Philippa, whose tenacity and career-driven mindset might have reminded him of Natasha had he given it a thought. Had he paid more diligent attention, he might have tread more carefully during the endless strategy sessions and business dinners that had thrown them into increasing contact with one another. Then one evening, both he and Philippa had been in attendance at one of Magda and Jeremy’s dinner parties; they had, in fact, arrived together, Mark’s gallantry coming to the rescue when Philippa had casually mentioned her car troubles at chambers that morning. Bridget, it transpired, was supposed to have been present as well, except for an apparent scheduling conflict. During the course of the evening, Mark had overheard Magda and Jeremy speaking about her in low voices and had surmised that Bridget had recently begun dating again, though not, it seemed, with any serious intent. He had wanted this, Mark told himself even as he had fought to breathe through the tightness in his chest. Philippa, noticing his apparent distress, had gently drawn him aside and inquired if he was all right. Without intending to, Mark had found himself talking softly to her about Bridget. Philippa had rested a hand on his arm as he spoke, her eyes full of sympathy.  
As the evening had drawn to a close, Mark had found himself reluctant to part company, and Philippa’s invitation to linger for a nightcap when he dropped her at home had seemed far more inviting than his empty house, where memories of Bridget whispered into the echoing silence.  
“You just seem like you could do with a friend,” Philippa had said frankly. Mark couldn’t disagree, though what had followed—what he could recall of it at least—had not been precisely what he might have classified as friendly. He dimly recollected, through the fog that had obscured his memory, the touch of Philippa’s hand on his cheek as her lips found his, thinking dully that the perfectly-manicured, ring-bedecked fingers stroking his face left none of the lingering warmth of Bridget’s caress. His next vaguely coherent memory had been waking in an unfamiliar bed, head throbbing unpleasantly, Philippa asleep next to him.  
\----------  
“I’m still not entirely sure,” he said as he concluded his retelling of the events of that evening, “precisely how I allowed things to go quite as far as they did. I never meant for it to happen.”  
Bridget frowned. “So,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “let me see if I’ve got this straight, Mark. You accidentally spent the evening with her at a party, accidentally drove her home, accidentally drank too much, accidentally had what I can only assume was painfully dispassionate sex with her, and accidentally passed out in her bed?”  
In response, Mark offered a sheepish grin. “Well, when you put it in those terms, it wasn’t quite as simple as that, I suppose, but I wasn’t thinking clearly; how could I when all I could think of was you?”  
“I wonder,” Bridget murmured, “what might have happened if we hadn’t run into each other eventually.” Mark’s answering shrug conveyed far more nonchalance than he felt; it was easy to think, lying beside Bridget again, that he might eventually have realized his mistake, but had fate not intervened, who knew for how long his pride might have prevented him taking steps to reconcile with her? After the fog had lifted from that night with Philippa and the pair of them had slid without much discussion into something that resembled a comfortable companionship, Mark told himself that it was certainly preferable to being alone. He convinced himself that he wasn’t drawing comparisons with Bridget each time he noted that Philippa’s smile never reached her eyes when she looked at him, or the barely detectable curl of her lip when she found herself in contact with someone she considered beneath her (which seemed quite often). He respected Philippa’s expertise; he admired the tenacity of her work ethic; he could—he must—learn to remember that happiness in life wasn’t having what made him contented, but being contented with what he had. Then, once again, Bridget had thrown his carefully reordered universe into chaos.

\---Flashback---

  
“No, Mark. Absolutely not.” Standing in the center of her living-room, Philippa rested a hand on her hip and glared at him.  
“It’s too late to back out now,” he said, laboring to keep his tone calm. “It would look terribly inconsiderate when we’ve already told Magda we’d attend.” When he’d arrived to pick her up for another of Magda and Jeremy’s dinner parties, Philippa had stubbornly announced that she had decided she wouldn’t be accompanying him.  
“They’re more your friends than mine, Mark,” she protested.  
“Perhaps you might try to make some effort to get to know them instead of looking down your nose at everyone.” As he spoke, Mark winced at the twinge in his chest, the nearly identical accusation Bridget had once hurled at him echoing in his mind. Now, as he looked at the woman standing in front of him, the flame of jealousy in her eyes contrasting with her pristinely polished, unruffled appearance, he saw, perhaps for the first time, how much Bridget had truly challenged him to change the way he saw the world—and himself.  
“How can I?” demanded Philippa. “All Magda ever seems to talk about is Bridget! How lovely Bridget is; how funny Bridget is; who is she, that they should all hold me up to her standard?”  
“Philippa,” Mark said gently, laying a hand on her arm. “You’re being unreasonable. She’s one of Magda’s oldest friend’s.”  
“One of Magda’s oldest friends?” Philippa gave a cruel laugh, her lip curling. “Mark, she’s your ex, for Christ’s sake!”  
“Regardless,” replied Mark, the softness of his tone masking his rising frustration, “no one is holding you up to her standard.”  
“They are, Mark, and so are you, but you’d see that if you weren’t still in love with her!”  
Mark closed his eyes and silently counted to 10. “I really don’t have time for this conversation,” he said finally. “If you don’t want to come with me, fine; I’ll make your excuses. Once you’ve calmed down and begun to think like a rational human being, you’re welcome to join me.”  
Turning on his heel, he left without another word, hardly giving Philippa’s accusation a thought until he glanced up during the evening and, with a jolt that nearly knocked the wind out of him, he saw Bridget across the room. She, like him, appeared to have come on her own, and Mark had just begun to wonder whether or not he could summon the courage to approach her when his mobile began to vibrate in his pocket. He didn’t need to check the display to know that Philippa was calling; she’d been attempting to reach him all evening, most likely to apologize. Quietly slipping into the hall, mark withdrew the phone and returned the call.  
“Mark, it’s about time!” Philippa sneered down the line. “I’ve been trying to reach you all evening.”  
“Philippa, this isn’t the time or the place,” Mark whispered. “I’m sorry I left you so abruptly; I just… needed to clear my head.”  
“Mark, I—I’m sorry,” Philippa choked. “I didn’t mean what I said.”  
“Sh, listen, I can’t talk here, all right? Why don’t you relax; pour yourself a glass of wine, and I’ll try to get away early and come round so we can discuss this like civilized adults.”  
“You’re a dear, Mark.”  
“I do my best.” As Mark ended the call, he glanced up only to find… “Bridget.”  
At the sound of her name, she paused and began to back away. “Oh, um, I didn’t, I mean… hi.”  
“Hello,” Mark murmured.  
“I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry I interrupted,” she said, continuing to back out of the hallway. “I just, um, needed the loo.”  
Realizing he had been standing with his back against the door, Mark quickly stepped aside. “Go right ahead.”  
“Oh, I—ah, thanks.” Still apparently torn between moving forward and backing away, Bridget teetered on the spot, the heel of her shoe catching on a hole in the carpet beneath her and causing her to lose her footing. Instinctively Mark reached for her, hooking an arm around her waist as she fell against him, and somehow, her lips were suddenly pressed against the side of his neck. Emitting an embarrassed squeak, she pulled back.  
“Hello,” he whispered again, his hand coming up to caress her cheek.  
“Hi,” she said. “How are you?”  
“Fine, thanks. And you?”  
“Oh, um, you know, not too bad.”  
“Right… right.”  
“Well,” said Bridget breathlessly.  
“Well,” echoed Mark. Their eyes locked, and before either of them could voice the question hovering in the inch of space between them, their mouths met. Bridget raised her arms around Mark’s neck at the precise moment that he tightened his hold on her waist. After several minutes, Mark lifted his head. Wordlessly he gestured toward the closed door to the toilet, and Bridget nodded in silent assent. Abandoning all sense of decorum, Mark scooped her up in his arms and carried her inside, kicking the door shut behind him. Their gazes remained locked as they swiftly and silently removed their clothing. Without preamble, Mark grasped Bridget’s shoulders, pressed her against the wall, and felt her catch his lower lip between her teeth as he drove himself into her. Bridget thrust her hips forward to meet him, her nails raking his flesh as she clung to his shoulders. Mark’s very blood seemed to ignite in his veins as he poured himself into her, holding back nothing, neither knowing nor caring where his body ended and hers began, trying as he moved inside her to leave the imprint of his love upon the very core of her being. Bridget hooked her hands behind his head to strain him closer, her momentum as she pressed herself against him nearly knocking them both off balance. With one last, lingering kiss, Bridget collapsed against Mark’s chest, her arms wound around his back to prevent her trembling legs from giving way beneath her. For several minutes, Mark simply held her against him, twining his fingers through her hair as he gazed down at her. She knew—she must have known about Philippa; Mark felt certain that either Magda or Jeremy had told her. Yet the moment their mouths had met, she had colluded with him in what had followed. What guilt Mark felt over his actions had less to do with any consideration for Philippa’s feelings (had she any) and more to do with the fact that those actions had sent him spinning away from the path that he had always hitherto charted for himself with a strict, moral compass. Philippa loved him no more than he did her, Mark knew; she loved his name, his position, the power and prestige that forming an alliance with him would create. Nonetheless, he had behaved irresponsibly, and he needed to resolve matters in whatever way would permit him to emerge with as much of his honor intact as possible. If only he could be assured that fate had intervened and opened a path for him to return to Bridget. He couldn’t—he mustn’t squander this chance. He must tread carefully.  
‘Don’t act rashly, Darcy,’ he told himself, even as he pressed his cheek against the top of Bridget’s head. ‘Wait for the dust to settle.’ Bridget stirred finally and raised her head, her eyes seeking his.  
“Bridget,” he said in a tremulous whisper, cupping her face between his hands. As they gazed at one another, he endeavored to communicate with his look all of the words that seemed caught in his throat. Gently he pressed a kiss to her forehead before releasing her and turning to gather up his abandoned clothing, avoiding meeting his own reflection in the mirror until the last possible moment, when he hastily combed his fingers through his hair and smoothed down the wrinkles in his shirt.  
He didn’t go to Philippa that night; he went home, took down a bottle of scotch, and endeavored to work out how best to terminate their association, turning the matter over in his mind until exhaustion and alcohol dragged him down into the temporary comfort of oblivion. The following morning he woke to a long, persuasively tearful message on his answerphone from Philippa that dislodged the guilt he had attempted to cast aside the night before. It would be only a matter of time, he knew, before she found fault with him again, and in a characteristically male, passive-aggressive maneuver that he detested himself for employing, Mark lay in wait for that moment to present itself.  
\----------  
“Mark?” with a start, he realized he’d begun to slide back into a doze as he reflected on all that had occurred during the last several months. “Mark, are you all right?”  
Gently he took the hand that Bridget had rested on his arm and raised it to his lips. “Bridget,” he said, linking his fingers through hers, “may I ask you something, since we’re being honest? Why did it take you so long to return my calls?” Bridget hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “Bridget,” Mark said again, pressing her hand between both of his. “I want to know; I need to know. Whatever it is, whatever I’ve done, give me a chance to mend it. Please.”  
“It… wasn’t you, precisely,” Bridget said at last.  
“What, then? Darling, tell me. Please.”  
“I don’t suppose Philippa told you we ran into each other a few weeks after Magda and Jeremy’s dinner party?”  
“What? Dear god, I had no idea, unless…” Mark suddenly recalled an evening not long after his impromptu tryst with Bridget, when Philippa had arrived home from work with a quietly smug expression that had unsettled him. When he had confronted her, she had simply responded that she had had a productive day’s work.  
“Bridget, what happened? What did she say to you?”  
“I was meeting a few colleagues for lunch and spotted Jeremy and another woman—Philippa, it turned out—with a client. Poor Jeremy didn’t know where to look, but he tried to gloss the whole thing over—introduced us, and we chatted for a few minutes.”  
“I hope she was at least cordial to you,” said Mark.  
“She was, at first. She said she’d heard all about me from Magda, and I asked after you, of course.”  
“Of course,” said Mark, smiling in spite of himself.  
“Just, you know, to be polite.”  
“Naturally, and what did she say?”  
“She said…” Bridget paused, her eyes filling with tears, “she said you were both really happy and—and that you couldn’t wait to start a family.”  
“Oh, Bridget.” Mark slid his arms around her and drew her to his chest. “I always suspected she was jealous of you, but I never imagined she could be so vindictive. Crikey, no wonder you weren’t returning my calls.” Despite his bravest endeavors, Mark had failed to put Bridget out of his mind following that night with her, but when his multiple attempts to reach her had met with no success, he had eventually given up and dropped back into the numbing monotony of his work and what passed for life with Philippa.  
“I was angry,” said Bridget. “And confused. I didn’t know what to think.”  
“Bridget, I wouldn’t—I could never have done… what we did if I weren’t still as madly in love with you as I was, as I am.”  
“I know that now,” she said. “And I thought so at the time, but then there was Philippa. I couldn’t get past that. It seemed so out of character for you, Mark—risking a relationship for casual sex. Even if you didn’t love her, I couldn’t imagine you just betraying her—betraying whatever commitment you’d made to her—without a thought. That wasn’t the Mark Darcy I knew; that wasn’t the Mark Darcy I loved. None of it made sense. I didn’t know what to do.” And once again, fate had intervened. When he had received an unexpected call from her several weeks ago, asking him to meet her for lunch, never could he have foreseen the turn of events that had left his head and heart spinning. Bridget was pregnant, she told him, at which he had automatically—and with a hard knot in the pit of his stomach—told her he wished her nothing but happiness. He had understood, or thought he understood, the reason for her silence; of course she had moved on. Of course she had found the happiness she deserved with someone else; it was the reason he had let her go, and he must accept it gracefully. If she was happy, he told himself, he could live with that. Then she had reached across the table and taken his hand, and in spite of himself, he felt the hard knot of ice in his stomach beginning to thaw.  
“Mark, you don’t understand,” she had whispered. “I’m telling you because it’s—I mean, the baby, I think it’s ours.” He had protested; it had been months. She had been with other men, surely, and in any case, the child couldn’t be his—not when they had tried for so long. Several days before, however, the paternity test had come back positive, and the overpowering waves of shock, joy, and utter relief that had burst upon Mark had left him nearly faint.  
The news had, of course, offered him a far more convenient escape hatch from Philippa than he had hoped for—a somewhat cowardly admission that Mark had made only to himself, though he suspected Bridget was not unaware of it. Effectively providing Philippa adequate proof that her jealousy of Bridget had not been unfounded might have aroused some guilt in Mark’s heart had Philippa’s interference not so long stood in the way of their reunion.  
Now Mark smiled as he wrapped his arms around Bridget’s waist, dancing his fingers across the just-discernable bump blossoming beneath the cotton of her nightdress. “You know,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head, “there’s just one thing I regret—that we might have had this moment sooner had I been less foolish. When I think of how much time I wasted, believing this would never happen… Bridget, can you ever forgive me?”  
Smiling, Bridget twisted round and reached up to pat his cheek. “I think maybe it was meant to happen this way,” she said. “It had to be organic, you know? Just us—just the feelings, without the stress of trying.” Mark nodded, remembering that night, of how effortlessly his body had melted into hers; how his love had flowed into her, unbidden and unburdened.  
“I think,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple, “that we might have to stay like this forever.”  
Bridget tilted her head up to peck him on the lips. “You know what, Mark Darcy?” she said. “I think you might be right.” 

The End


End file.
